Google neuromorphic systems to learn more. It is a new kind of electrical engineering where systems are designed by emulating how nature processes data - event driven asynchronous parallelism like in the central nervous system.

@goafrit: SPIKING communication - the preferred way nature computes. I think in 100 years, digital will be gone and we will begin to compute like nature.

Fascinating. I'd like to know more about spiking communication. Digital does seem limited. Just from what I can see from Wikipedia, it makes me think those helmets that transmit knowledge directly to the brain in sci-fi films and tv shows might be possible 100 years from now.

One other interesting omission from the rules is a requirement that the flash drive be readable when it is recovered. This goes to Tom's earlier comment that a magnet is not necessarily the best retrieval strategy, but since there is no requirement that the drive be readable it is probably a good choice. We may be training the next generation of lawyers as well as engineers and spys...